QUICK! Get an entry in before the power goes out...

I keep on getting embarrassed with food! Oh boy! Family visits are proving to fill me up with a lot of good traditional food.

The one thing on that though is that it is hard for me to not feel bad taking their food or taking bundles upon bundles of boo that they pluck from their garden to give us. When you are told of families’ going through times of absolute starvation and how they had nothing to eat during the famine times you just want to return the food back to them. However, that would disgrace them; and that would be worse in this culture than starvation. It still amazes me how much honor this culture has in following with their traditions. It is so cool and something you don’t see across the board back home.

Family visits are amazing. I feel like I use that word a lot…but that’s a great word to explain things here. We visited Sunday and Eric’s home and then Sarah. It is encouraging and hard at the same time. Sunday and Eric were left to live with their grandmother after their father passed and their mother remarried. Here, stepfathers do not want to take care of someone else’s child so that means that children from the first marriage are usually left with grandmothers or aunts. It is hard to realize that moms leave their children but then I have to remember it was and probably still is hard on the mothers. Along with that, we are finding a lot of the mom’s are married to men with more than one wife. The man doesn’t take care of the wives like he should and almost abandons them. These stories are hard. Again, we are hearing more and more stories of how the war has affected people. It is crazy.
When we arrived at Ayir Sarah’s house I was greeted by a little kitten that was gray all over and looked like Stryder…he just had brown eyes instead. But anyways, it made me miss my meows. He was so tiny and cute…..

Mary is trying to Africanize me…well, teach me how to make things here…PRAISE GOD! We purchased g-nuts and Simsim and went back to her house. She taught me how to roast and prepare g-nut paste. It smelled so good and was fun to chat. Baby Sharon and I are becoming good friends. I like her so much. She is a lot of fun.

Charles, ECM National Director, arrived late at night. Simon came with me to pick him up from the bus park since it can be a little interesting to say the least at night. It was cool to see Simon so proud of his city and telling Charles all about it.

Well, power just went off….so that means I need to get going….